Woofing like a blog

So I wrote the below labouring under the expectation that Myriam’s computer and mine might be able to collaborate in such a way that I could post live and direct from organic bliss-ville. Alas, not only could my memory stick find no safe haven in Myriam’s computer, almost as ancient as the farmhouse, but much less charming, the internet connection moved so slowly as to thwart any alternatives. So that was that. I post it nonetheless as an eccentric historical piece. Like a newly trained forager, I have gathered much trivia, many photographs, and too few pieces of genuine wisdom on topics like la vie auvergnate, flora of the Massif central, botanical history, la cuisine sauvage, quirks of pronunciation in the South, potatoes, cheese-making, and so on. I shall post my gleanings in due course. I have nought to lose. I am, after all, now in Toulouse, if only for a night.

Ahem.

Yes, I’ve left the fleshpots of Paris far behind. There and then, I was trawling the Place de Clichy after midnight; here and now, I am collecting wildflowers from fields unadulterated by pollutants. I’m two days into the first of two woofing stints, this one in the Auvergne and the next in Corsica, and la vie is looking pretty belle. Woofing, I will remind you, is a scheme whereby likely types, like myself, work for four to six hours a day on an organic farm in exchange for food and board. I seem to have fallen into rather the right situation here in the Auvergne. Auvergne is the region, Cantal the département, Thiezac the nearest Holbrook-sized village and Aurillac the nearest Albury-sized town. I’m staying with a lovely woman named Myriam who lives in a big sixteenth century farmhouse, la Bastide Haute, perched on the side of a hill nicely plonked in the middle of the Massif central. It is a most ridiculously scenic place. There are po-faced sheep wearing bells bleating around the place and at least four dormice resident in the beams above my bed. There is a rooster, an orchard and a big stand of wormwood. There are fruit trees, raspberry and blackcurrant canes, beehives, nettles, and many varieties of potato, zucchini, carrot, turnip and beans. I’m tasked with pottering in the vegetable garden, picking wildflowers and herbs for dinner and tisanes, chatting to the chickens, and learning to cook a few new dishes. I’ve got a huge stone barn cum studio to myself (plus the local dormouse population), the dog, Gigi, seems to like me, and if it rains tonight, we’ll go on a trip into the pine forest to pick mushrooms tomorrow. It’s all rather nice.

As proof that I’m not fabricating this substitution of good, wholesome, hearty, living for fast, bad, and loose life, I tender the following.

Some valerian picked by mine own hands.

Chickens cavorting beneath the washing line. Cavorting, I might note, before the revival of my long-buried lawn-mowing skills and the subsequent transformation of the lawns.

As a consequence of this new phase of healthy living, I won’t be as proximate to the toxic fumes of the internet as usual. This is one reason why this may be an ephemeral – if entirely delightful – phase. If you have urgent questions about matters dilettantish, note that I’ll be following a slow-dripping herbal clock for the next few weeks.